What You Measure is What You Get.

Einstein :
Not everything that can be counted counts.
And not everything that counts can be counted.

About me.

I know enough to know that at 04.00am it gets dark out on the streets. It has done this for the last twenty odd years, to my knowledge and will probably continue for the forseeable future. At some stage in this ‘future’ I shall retire and probably won’t give a damn if it still gets dark at 04.00am. Until then I shall be out there, somewhere, lurking in the shadows because someone, somewhere will be doing stuff they shouldn’t and then, well then I will introduce myself. In the meanwhile I shall try to remain sane and remember why I joined in the first place and try to ignore all the people who piss me off by making the job more complicated than it should be.

Opinions

Any opinions contained in posts are mine and mine alone. Many of them will not be those of any Police Force, Police Organisation or Police Service around this country. The opinions are based on many years of working within the field of practical operational Police work and reflect the desire to do things with the minimum of interference by way of duplication for the benefit of others who themselves do not do the same job. I recognise that we all perform a wide range of roles and this is essential to make the system work. If you don’t like what you see remember you are only one click on the mouse away from leaving. I accept no responsibility for the comments left by others.

Recent Comments

C.T.C. Constabulary.

A Strategic Community Diversity Partnership.
We are cutting bureaucracy and reducing the recording of target and monitoring related statistics.
Our senior leaders will drive small, economical cars from our fleet surplus to save money to invest in better equipment for our frontline response officers.
We are investing money to reinstate station canteens for the benefits of those 24/7 response officers.
We have a pursuit policy. The message is that if you commit an offence and use a vehicle, we will follow you and stop you if necessary. It is your duty to stop when the lights and sirens are on.
We take account of the findings of the Force questionnaire and are reducing the administration and management levels and returning these officers to frontline response duties.
We insist on a work-life balance.
We have no political masters.
We are implimenting selection processes that take account of an individuals skills and proven abilities for the job. Our senior leaders will have one foot in reality and still possess the operational Policing skills they have long forgotton about and seldom used. All ranks are Police Officers first and specialists second.
We will impliment career development and performance evaluation monitoring of our leaders by those officers who operate under that leadership.
The most important role is that of Constable. All other roles are there to positively support the role and the responsibility of Constable and the duties performed.

Whichendbites

“We trained very hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising. It can be a wonderful method of creating the illusion of progress while creating confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.”......Petronius

Just so.

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

Reality.

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.

Rank V’s Responsibility

Don't confuse your idea of how important you are with the responsibility of your role.

Meetings.

If you had to identify, in one word, why we will never achieve our full potential, Meetings would be that word.

There is always a bigger picture.

When there is no answer to your problem, there is always deflection from the need to justify giving an answer.

In all the years I have been involved with Police Dogs, the one thing we tried our best to adhere to was the Home Office manual on the training and care of Police Dogs.

This manual of guidance was the bible. Over many years it was amended and modified and known under different names but the fact that it set out its parameters never changed.

Anyone who disregarded the rules deserved to be dealt with appropriately, be it in training, deployment or on matters of care and welfare.

More importantly, if you were not very good as a handler, or lacked the ability to train your dog(s) this could be evidenced and you could face the appropriate, ultimately removal from the world of working a Police Dog.

It appears that in some areas the ‘guidance’ now offered by the current document, despite being a Nationally accredited and accepted document, holds no sway with some members of the management in the CTCC and some parts of it can be disregarded. The inconvenient parts that is.

On the scales of the bigger picture, the one side of following the guidelines to show best practice and to protect handlers, instructors and the organisation is heavily offset by the other side where the state of mind in some areas is that the guidelines are exactly that. Only guidelines which we do not need to follow. Add to that a great deal of risk managing things and all handlers are safe in the knowledge that when their arses are on the line the organisation will be firmly behind them with relevant answers to the questions of why certain ‘guidelines’ may have been selectively ignored.

I hope this never happens as the management responsible for zephyrs of selective ignorance will have moved on and poor handler X may find themselves in the spotlight trying to justify things that have occurred as a result of management ignoring the rules, sorry guidelines.

There have been instances where training has become a dirty word, an activity that produces nothing measurable so can be reduced to provide more time for handlers to become more involved in doing things that can be measured and therefore better managed. Or the management already has a pre-determined agenda, their agenda.

Training is essential and vital.

This is because of a number or reasons.

The fact that the guidelines state so is one reason.

Producing better Police dogs is another.

Ignoring the guidelines for convenience is like juggling eggs.

Eventually someone will drop one.

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2 Responses

I love watching the police dogs, they are just so good.
We have a cat now so it’s no good training her (!!!) but we have had two dogs and always train them but not sure I could train them to that level though.

I agree wholeheartedly with the above comments. All handlers and their dogs should be able to perform to the standards set out in the manual. I retired after 30yrs service, 23 as a dog handler, recently and the standards of some handlers/ dogs is appalling. Minimum standards shoud be easily achieved and maintained.